


Considering the Varieties of Silence

by thebookofnights



Series: Partially Stars [5]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Street Cleaning Day, Typical Night Vale Violence, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-20 15:13:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2433389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookofnights/pseuds/thebookofnights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos is just having one of those days.</p>
<p>You know the kind, you've probably had one yourself. Mysterious doors in the desert. Worsening nightmares. An upcoming performance review from a boss that isn't really human. An arrest by the Secret Police. The first, unforgettable time you ever see the Night Vale City Council in person. A town-wide emergency that leaves even the Voice of Night Vale frightened. Not to mention a lost, confused stranger who needs a place to hide. You know — one of those days where everything happens at once.</p>
<p>But Carlos is on it. He's got rules, he's got a backup plan, he can handle this.</p>
<p>...Right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Considering the Varieties of Silence

_There’s an army in the distance._

_The sun is smeared across the horizon, so that the horizon appears to be all sun. The moon is three-quarters bright, riding in the immense desert sky, a coin tossed upward into a deep blue well. Sunset or sunrise, Carlos can’t tell._

_Somewhere behind him a red light blinks. He thinks it must be the light on the radio tower. He wants to turn, to see if he’ll discover Night Vale behind him, the belt of the scrublands crowding close, home at his back with all the open eyes of its windows winking back that bloody light._

_He wants to turn. He can’t. He’s too afraid it won’t be there after all._

_There’s an army in the distance and he can hear the noise they make, like muted thunder, like an immense savage growling. They are miles and miles away, too far away to hear, but he can hear them anyway, and an indeterminate amount of time has already passed, and are they drawing closer, or is it only an illusion?_

_When the shadow falls across him he jerks, eyes narrowed, one arm flung up against the glare. Becomes aware that he’s not alone._

_That maybe he’s had company for a while._

_There’s a man in a tan jacket standing nearby, next to the mouth of a deep pit. He’s holding a suitcase made of badly cured deerskin. From inside the suitcase, a crazed counterpoint to the inhuman sounds of the army on the horizon — as if this whole thing were a symphony in two parts, carefully tuned to erode its audience’s sanity — rises the thick, clotted buzzing of thousands of flies. A fine chain, mottled with rust, shackles the suitcase to the man’s hand. Carlos can’t focus on the man’s features, can’t even make out the color of his skin or hair, but every link in that chain stands out in sharp detail._

_They stand there staring at each other, fine sand wisping about their feet, like gunslingers in a spaghetti Western, waiting on the signal to draw and fire. Then Carlos flinches, backing away, unable to take his eyes off the stranger with the non-face, the stranger who is apparently carrying his darkest fears around in a deerskin suitcase like a traveling salesman of the damned._

_The man in the tan jacket frowns — or maybe it’s a smile? — and opens his mouth to speak, but if words come out, Carlos is unable to hear them. He can hear that infernal buzzing. The distant shouts of the invaders. Even his own footsteps crunching on gravel as he backs away, unable to stop himself. But he can’t hear what the man in the tan jacket says._

_And whatever it is, it’s important._

_He never dreams about inconsequential things anymore._

_“I didn’t fucking_ ask _for this,” he says, before he realizes he’s going to speak at all. “I didn’t. I don’t even know what this is. I don’t understand you. Please, leave me alone —”_

“Carlos. _Carlos._ Wake up! I’m not leaving you alone, not like this —”

“— get _away_ from me with that thing, God, I don’t want to see it anymore —”

“You’re _dreaming,_ damn it, open your eyes!”

Dave Halland’s voice. His normally unflappable employee sounds... flapped. More than flapped. _Frightened._

He doesn’t want to turn. There’s something in front of him that he shouldn’t turn his back on. Something unspeakable.

But if Dave’s in trouble, he has to help.

Carlos turns.

His perspective abruptly falls into place with solidity. He’s not standing out in the desert somewhere. He’s not standing at all. He’s lying on his side, on a lumpy but familiar surface, and there’s something clamped around his wrist like a chain, something he slowly recognizes as a hand.

“Come on, bossman, snap out of it,” more gently. “Open your eyes.”

He stills. Tries to take a deep breath, which breaks up into shivers. Obeys.

Shadows. The dim fluorescent light above the lab sink. A faint, inviting predawn glow sifting down from the high windows. Dave leaning over him, worried, and silence. Silence laden with a dark current. It leaves him wanting to lie back down and pretend that his nocturnal terrors have _not_ just broken messily and obviously through the barrier of his consciousness.

“What —” He rasps out on another shiver. Tries again, mentally treading water. “What — what time is it?”

Dave visibly lets go of a breath. “About seven, I think. Are you all right?”

Carlos tries to smile. It must be coming out lopsided, because Dave’s face doesn’t change. “Yeah. I just — insomnia again.”

“That’s obvious, or you would have remembered to go home before you passed out.”

He groans, rubs his free hand over his eyes. “The coffee must have worn off all at once. Can I have my wrist back now?”

Dave lets go immediately, embarrassed. “Sorry. Uh — boss, we need to talk.”

Sitting up, Carlos recognizes the uneven surface. It belongs to the homicidally ancient sofa bed they inherited along with the lab space. Thankfully, he’d apparently been conscious enough not to unfold the damn thing before he fell asleep. He looks down at himself, frowning. No cuts or abrasions that he can discover. “How urgent is it?”

“Not sure how to quantify that.” Dave rises from his kneeling posture to walk back to the center table, and Carlos feels an icy drop of apprehension tick down into his stomach.

He wonders ironically why people tend to credit him with being handsome or commanding next to Dave, who might easily be mistaken for a football player or a young politician if it weren’t for his labcoat. Certainly women flirt with Dave first, but maybe that’s because they can sense chatting _him_ up would be a waste of time. And there’d been that one insufferably bigoted department manager who’d directed all of his questions to Phil Kirk, the only member of the research team who’s male, white, and unable to claim membership in any minority group.

Except, perhaps, for _outsiders who end up in Night Vale._

A minority group that’s just gained one member, if Carlos is right. And he’s not sure he wants to share _any_ descriptor with the man in the tan jacket.

He pushes the thought away. “Is it scientific, or personal?”

“Both, really,” says Dave, turning back.

Something about his tone makes the edges of that cold apprehension ripple, an internal pool of expanding rings that break against the inside of Carlos’s skin in tiny, frigid waves.

_The next thing out of his mouth will be Cecil’s name, he’s going to tell me he’s noticed, everyone’s noticed — that I need to stop deluding myself, stop listening to the radio, stop putting the man in_ danger —

But Dave says, in a soft, concerned voice, “Your nightmares,” and then, as Carlos stares at him, “They’re getting worse. Aren’t they?”

“Worse? No!” Thrown, Carlos almost laughs before he can stop himself. Then, more soberly, “No. I can promise you that. They’re not worse.”

“Maybe not in... in content. I don’t know, that has to be subjective, right? No, I’m talking about their effect on you. I’ve observed that you’re tense when you wake up — you start, you seem uncomfortable...” Dave paces around the table. “Eli and Marianne have done the most field time with you, and they both agreed that you have trouble falling asleep. You haven’t been taking your sleeping pills. And this — increased level of insomnia — it’s been going on for nearly a week. It’s building up. I’m concerned for you. We all are, I guess.”

“Well, I... hang on. How do you know I haven’t been taking the pills?”

Dave shrugs. “Inference. At the very least, if you had, you’d be out of doses by now, right?”

Carlos reaches down to rummage through the bag sitting beside the couch, comes up with the bottle of Halcion. Tosses it neatly underhand, still nearly full.

Catching it, Dave examines the label. “Why don’t you take it?”

“Side effects.” Carlos hears the brittle edge in his own voice, the warning that something might break if he tries too hard to suppress it. “Specifically, the side effect of being chemically sedated in an environment where I might need to run for my life with a second’s warning.”

Dave nods, as if he had expected this answer. “I know, boss, but I think you might be approaching a point where you need to weigh that against the effect of being constantly sleep-deprived in an environment where your judgement is always pivotal.”

“Fucking hell.” Carlos drops his head down onto the back of the couch. “We need a better solution than that.”

“We need a compromise,” Dave says. He turns the bottle in his fingers, absently, pills the color of sleep rattling inside like tiny pebbles disturbed. “Have you thought about moving in with the rest of us? There’s that room we’re still using for storage, we could...”

“No.” Carlos sighs on the word, wanting it to come out kindly. “I’m sorry, Dave, but I need the privacy.”

“Half dosage, then?” the other scientist offers, leaning on the table.

“I still don’t like it.” There’s a metallic taste in his mouth, probably the first sign of overnight dehydration, as he stands up.

“You don’t have to like it, boss, you just have to make a decision.” Firmly. “We... we care about you. Isn’t it worth at least agreeing to a trial period? Half dosage for one week, and if it doesn’t help, we’ll figure something else out. Deal, or deal in?”

Carlos smiles at hearing one of Eli Hirsch’s characteristic phrases repeated. The intern’s odd speech patterns are as virulently mimetic as they are endearing. “You’d really gamble over this?”

“Yeah. It’s important enough. If you’re as tired as you look, I might even win.”

“Just tell me, was this — uh, this intervention — your idea, or did Marianne put you up to it?”

Dave grins, relief evident in his face. “Marianne put me up to it. So?” He holds out the bottle.

Carlos hesitates. Calibrates. Then he clasps Dave’s hand lightly — the plastic bottle, with its somehow heavy freight of unconsciousness, pressed between their palms. Despite the circumstances, the moment of friendly contact eases some of the lingering numbness of the nightmare.

“Deal,” he says.

Driving out into the scrublands.

The worst of the nightmare smoking off and curling away, debris from a mental brushfire.

Silence.

There’s an almost-road in this quadrant that he can follow, a broad path slowly being swallowed by blood-hungry cholla and faintly purple strains of sagebrush. Here and there, he can see saguaros like dessicated arborescent candelabra, pointing thick brown fingers accusingly heavenward.

Months spent in Night Vale have done nothing to dilute the desert’s beauty for him, the way the encircling mountains beyond the Sand Wastes make clear, jagged ideograms against the sky. It almost hurts to look out at them for too long. Maybe that’s why he still hasn’t met anyone in town who will acknowledge their existence.

Morning broke with an audible crash: the now-familiar cacophony of sunrise resonating unevenly but precisely to the borders of Old Town, inaudible beyond, like a glass vase smashed to the floor of a soundproofed room. Carlos’s ears were still ringing when his phone went off in anticlimactic echo.

The last time he really spoke to John Peters _(you know,_ a soft, mischievous Voice adds in his mind, _the farmer),_ they’d been exchanging farewells after nearly dying in each other’s company. While it’s clear now that John Peters approves of Carlos, as much as he approves of anybody, their shared experience on the day of the Glow Cloud’s invasion did nothing to change his gruff nature. His greetings, whenever they’ve passed each other in the Ralph’s or at the Green Market, have always been limited. A polite nod. A wave. Once or twice, the small smile that he reserves for his friends.

He’s never called before.

While Carlos has a private, ground-in antipathy for conversations that begin this way — _Carlos, I need a favor,_ as if he can just thoughtlessly drop whatever complicated task he’s juggling at the moment — John Peters asked bluntly and with no attempt to be charming. It wasn’t until he’d already agreed to drive out to an apparently random point, a mile west of the town limits, that he realized how rarely John Peters must ask anyone for help.

Instead of irritation, he feels a renewed sense of solidarity with the taciturn farmer.

_Yeah. When_ you _need help, someone has to force it down your throat,_ his conscience promptly and smugly agrees with him. _Go on, be as objective as you like — but when you’re the one who ordered the tests, don’t whine when you get the results you expected._

“Hey,” he says out loud, to himself and the desert and the morning quiet in his car, “fuck off, I’m doing the best I can.”

No response from his own mind, or from anything else he might have been unconsciously addressing.

He wonders, not for the first time, if it would be possible to chart and label and measure all the varieties of silence, invent a taxonomy for the absence of sound. If he’d gone into a normal field, something less difficult to explain to potential investors, he wouldn’t have time for that. But here, whimsical or not, the idea might have some real-world application. It could even have something to do with the unseen mechanics of the forces he still isn’t ready to call magic.

Cecil Palmer might know.

Damn it. Carlos spares a glance from the road to his battered digital watch. 10:03. Three hours, give or take, since the last time he’d tripped over Cecil’s name. Today obviously isn’t going to be a record-breaking day, and it’s gotten worse since he agreed to share information with the radio host _(innocuous_ information, _business-related_ information, only that and never mind the dangerous secrets they’ve already, casually, kept for each other).

It’s a distraction he doesn’t need, a crush that keeps getting worse the longer it goes on. He starts thinking about Cecil, he stops thinking about anything else. It’s worse than the insomnia. It’s worse than quitting smoking.

And when he falls asleep, as always, Cecil’s voice tows his mind back into the depths, Cecil describing the texture and shape of his unconsciousness as if it were a solid thing, Cecil narrating each mad true vision just as calmly as he describes the day’s traffic on the radio, and with about the same quality of logic.

Cecil.

_Damn_ it.

No. Carlos is going to be professional. He’s got a long day of work ahead of him, and that’s after he deals with whatever problem John Peters called him about. Which he will, because if it weren’t for John Peters, the entire town might still be under the dominion of the Glow Cloud all the time, instead of only in uneven half-hour segments on Tuesdays or Fridays immediately after particularly grueling PTA meetings.

He’s going to get back to work. He’s probably going to be _late_ for work, if he doesn’t hurry. He’s absolutely not thinking about anything other than work.

Right.

The scientists’ first night in town was unforgettable for many reasons, but the mental trigger that always brings it back for Carlos is the sight of the unexplained lights above the Arby’s restaurant near the lab.

_You’ll never guess,_ Eli had told him gleefully over the phone, and he’d scoffed. Rubbed embarrassing moisture out of his eyes. Set his feet to walking and his mind to guessing, certain he’d capture at least a tiny corner of the truth before he got there.

And then he had gotten there, and the mere sight of the fragile, floating globes of jellyfish radiance had knocked the breath out of his lungs with wonder and curiosity.

This is like that.

“Yeah. Weird, isn’t it?” says John Peters.

Carlos opens his mouth to reply and for a moment nothing comes out. Then, “That’s one way of putting it.”

They stand side by side next to the farmer’s old pickup truck, their shadows tossed rakishly over the sand — shadow-John with the shape of his wide-brimmed hat blotting out the shape of his head, shadow-Carlos with his own head tilted so far to one side that he looks like the Hanged Man on a Tarot card. He has to shake off the disturbing image.

“You’re telling me it just, um. Appeared?”

“Wasn’t there six hours ago.”

“But did you observe its appearance?”

“Nope. Never saw it ’til I nearly walked into it. But my eyesight’s been in and out since the accident.”

“The... accident?” Carlos frowns, but John Peters is already striding forward, ignoring the question. The farmer puts a hand against the sunwarmed surface of the door. Takes it away again. Nothing happens.

The door is heavy, and scuffed, and worn — oak with a dark, glowing varnish. It is completely unsupported by any structure, except for its own doorframe. There aren’t even visible hinges on either side. The knob is brass, glowing mellowly in the morning light. Most tellingly, the sand around it is undisturbed except for John’s footprints. No tire tracks, no drag marks, no broken twigs. No sign of where the door came from.

It could be an antique. It could be new, custom-built, artfully debrided with sandpaper or some sort of tool. Or it could be old.

It could be unspeakably old.

It reminds Carlos of something he’s seen before, but he can’t pin down what. The nagging familiarity makes him nervous.

“I’m going to chain it shut,” says John Peters, abruptly. “Bolts through the frame, proper padlocks. It’s the only way.”

“The only way to do what?” Carlos moves closer, cautiously.

“To keep whatever _that_ is from getting through.” The farmer turns, a sour anxiety crimping the corner of his mouth. “You hear that, right, Carlos? Tell... tell me,” and he swallows hard, with a click in his throat, “tell me it isn’t another hallucination. Tell me you hear that.”

“I...” begins Carlos, about to shake his head, but John Peters reaches over before he can rethink his approach. Seizes his hand. Slaps it flat against the door’s surface, and all at once he _can_ hear it. Feel it, too, tiny shakes and vibrations, leaking through the minute cracks in the wood, a sound that might actually be from another plane of existence. From _other worlds than these._

Like knocking. Like muted thunder.

Or like marching footsteps, in the distance.

“So, wait, you just _walked away?”_ Phil Kirk demands.

Carlos stops in the middle of his explanation. Looks up from his watch — 10:23 — to raise an eyebrow at his senior research associate.

Nearly up to his elbows in soapsuds, Phil looks distinctly out of place. One of the New York lab assistants, the first to introduce Carlos to Phil, had once pointed out the older man in the hallway, summing him up in one sentence: “Easy to recognize, because no matter what he’s wearing, he looks like he’s wearing a suit and tie.” Carlos had laughed then, and felt ashamed of himself for laughing; now the memory makes him smile fondly.

“What are you grinning about?” irritably, and Phil seizes another breakfast plate, applying the same careful intensity to scrubbing it that he does to measuring volatile liquids. “You’re telling me you’re going to let John Peters — who, as much as he may be a respected member of the community here, is hardly qualified to properly monitor some kind of temporospatial anomaly — just do whatever he wants? We ought to seal off the area —”

“We _can’t_ seal off the area.” Reasonably. “We don’t have the authority to do that. That quadrant’s mostly town property, and I’m not risking a citation from the City Council. I’d like to keep all my fingers, thank you.”

Phil opens his mouth to reply, but before he can say anything, Eli skids into the kitchen of the science team’s shared Old Town rental house in his sock feet, grabbing the handle of the fridge to keep from going head-over-heels. “Hey, boss,” breathlessly, “douchebag proximity warning...”

Carlos blinks. Glances out the kitchen window, to find the porch empty. “What —?” he begins, then jumps as a wailing, sirening sound rises, like the scream of a man in mortal torment played back at half-speed, from just outside the hallway arch.

Eli and Phil are already glaring at each other.

“I thought you changed the ringtone!”

“I can’t, the settings are corrupted somehow!”

“You could at least have muted it!”

“Not without doing surgery on it! Jesus, Phil, it’s a living being, would you want _your_ vocal cords ripped out?”

“No, of course not! I meant, there has to be a dial you can turn —” Phil is cut off as the inconveniently sentient iPad, which has crawled around from the hallway and onto the kitchen floor with quick, shuffling tics of its insectile legs, lets loose its screeching ringtone again.

Carlos, wincing from the volume, scoops it up.

“Be quiet,” he says, gently, and all three of them obey — Phil returning with another scowl to the dishes, Eli with a sheepish grin, and the iPad with its delicate, transparent wings shivering in relief as he taps the _accept call_ button on the screen. Trying to hold on to the soft tone, “Hello?”

“Carlos.” The Director’s dead, flat voice, as usual, sparks tiny tremors in his hands and feet, impulses to run, to fight, to hide. “Were you outside the city limits this morning?”

He blinks. “You called to ask me if I went for a drive?”

“Yes or no. It is a very simple question. Did you leave Night Vale this morning?”

“Depends on what map you’re looking at.”

A toneless sigh. “I do not see whether that is defiance or mere human imprecision, but for now, I will let it pass. You were informed by email three days ago that you and your team were not to leave town on this date. Now, did you receive that message, or do I need to question my technical staff?”

Carlos swallows past the queasy feeling in his throat, looks an inquiry at Eli. The intern grimaces, nods once.

“No need to question anyone, we got it.”

“Next time. Follow instructions.” Nothing but cold threat in the Director’s voice. _If you could bottle that,_ Carlos thinks. _Bottle it and then make a Molotov cocktail out of it._ He imagines the Director’s car burning, sharp blue-white licks of flame, gasoline smell and guns lying like abandoned plastic toys in the gutter. It makes him smile.

“I’ll put the survey plans on hold for the day. Anything else?” Calmly, like he’s taking a drink order.

“Oh, there is much more. Your first performance review is at hand, and will be delivered by the end of the day. Assuming you are still alive and conscious by then.”

“Is that a threat, Director?”

“No,” with the same weight of absence, the same cold. “It is merely an observation. Life is perilous. For some, more than for others. And, as a result, our interests are furthered.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard this speech,” Carlos says, and sets the iPad down on the counter, where it begins to slowly crawl away, as if edging out of range.

“You are giving me the impression that you require _repetition,”_ the Director replies. “It is an aspect of employee relations that I rarely have to bother with, but you are... unusual. Well, then. Be at the airport at sundown, and this morning’s disobedience will be forgotten.”

There’s a heavy click as the call drops, and a heavier silence.

Then Eli snorts with mingled annoyance and disbelief. “Do you think that guy’s head would explode if he had to say ‘goodbye’ like a fucking human being at the end of a phonecall?”

“Probably,” Carlos agrees absently, looking at the iPad’s desktop image (a close-up shot of the scaled and peeling white paint on the side of their lab building) without really seeing it.

Phil says, “Your car could use some cleaning, huh?”

“Yeah.” Carlos grimaces, aware that he’s not referring to dirt.

“All right, all right, I’ll do it,” says Eli, holding up his hands as if he’s capitulating after a long and acrimonious argument. His T-shirt says _Screw Your Lab Safety — I Want Superpowers._ “Intern always has to do the dirty work.”

“Be careful, or I’ll hand you a mop,” Phil sniffs, and goes back to washing dishes.

Noon heat in the desert is something, Carlos reflects, propped against the half-open door of the lab, that likes to remind you that it is completely capable of killing you. It has a physical weight, like water, like some silences.

He closes his eyes for a moment and smiles, a cautious, hard-edged smile, tilting his head up to bask in that dangerous heat. No cigarettes today, only the oddly bitter lavender-scented lozenges that Marianne Smithson found at one of the nameless remedy shops on Old Musk Road. He holds one between preoccupied molars, trying to resist the urge to crunch it into pieces. The only readable instructions on the packaging — mostly labeled in runes that make his head start pounding in a discernible, but still sickening, pattern — say you’re supposed to let them dissolve slowly. He’s a little fanatical about following any instructions he can find.

_Too bad this town didn’t come with a manual,_ he thinks, and muffles a sudden snort of laughter against his arm.

“Hey, mister? You all right?” A child’s voice, high and sweet and half-broken.

Carlos opens his eyes to find two boys in Night Vale Scout uniforms, poised on bikes and regarding him with keen curiosity. “Oh. Yes,” he says, feeling that smile still surfacing around his mouth. “I was just thinking.”

“He’s that scientist,” the second boy says, shoving his companion.

“I _know_ he’s that scientist,” and the first boy twists around in his seat to shove back. “Normal people haven’t got time to stand around _thinking.”_

“Words of wisdom,” says Carlos gravely. The first boy shakes his head in response, a weary gesture that says _adults, who’s able to make sense of adults, it’s not worth trying,_ but the second boy pulls a compass out of his bag. Excitedly, “Mr. Scientist, do you have some sort of secret plan? You know, for surviving today? We have this whole scheme to —”

“— give the whole thing _away,_ why don’t you, you jerk,” yelps the first boy, slapping his hand to his forehead in disdain.

“It’s all right,” Carlos interposes, “I don’t require information about secret plans from people who pass my lab, only from people who actually walk in. Unless you’d like some orange milk, or something?”

A doubtful look. Orange milk is clearly not as fascinating as whatever they have planned. “Uh, no thanks. You know, we just stopped to make sure you weren’t, like, sick or whatever. Come on, Barty, let’s ride.”

They peel out of the lab’s loading zone, laughing over some shared joke. Watching, Carlos is caught by a brief moment of nostalgia that seems to spin off their bicycle wheels like Fate’s thread. A longing for childhood. Too-often-mended glasses. Friends. Honest bruises — the kind you get from wiping out on concrete, or falling out of a tree. No problem showing those at school.

Too easy to picture Cecil Palmer as one of those Scouts, hair messy and darkly unbleached and combed back by the breeze; Cecil saying, “Hey Carlos, so about our secret plan,” in the husky ghost of the Voice, jumpy with its headlong approach to puberty; Cecil’s smile quick and blinding and earnest and without any of its measured, adult hesitations.

Cecil.

_Damn_ it.

He’s gone and bitten the lozenge into pieces, just when it was almost small enough to let drift against his tongue.

“What did I tell you,” Marianne demands, nudging the door all the way open beside him, “about offering sweets to children?”

“Don’t do it if we don’t have enough refrigerator space for the children?”

_“Carlos,_ honestly,” but she’s laughing, hands on her hips. “Do you want people to mistake you for some kind of stalker? And stop chewing that thing, I can hear it from here. Jeez, you’re going to just sink what’s left of our reputation.”

“We had one of those?”

Marianne rolls her eyes at him and tugs the cuff of his labcoat. He sighs, shrugs.  Follows her back inside, abruptly pushing away the feeling of relief that floats toward him when he’s away from the heat and the pressure of the sky.

If the Director’s tracking him, walls are no protection.

10:42.

The five of them stand in the lab’s tiny bathroom, dressed for work and also for trouble, quiescent radio transceivers in their pockets, carefully laced desert boots on their feet.

The shower is running, sluggishly, enough aural interference to exclude listening devices, and Dave has just gotten through a series of carrying, entirely feigned comments about fixing the supposedly broken faucet. Now he says, softly, “So, how’d it go?”

“Nothing,” Eli whispers back.

“You’re sure?” Marianne is braiding her hair back with quick, efficient motions; as usual, several loose curls fall into her face like stray copper wires.

“Positive. Fortress of solitude.” Eli looks doubtful at his own awkward metaphor. “Uh, red plastic bubble of solitude? Solitude on wheels? The Solitudemobile? Whatever. No GPS, no bugs, no screechers. Totally clean.”

“You’re sure you didn’t miss anything?” Phil crosses his arms.

“I,” in an mock-offended undervoice, “am the foremost unknown expert in this field. Haven’t failed yet — cross my heart and hope to die without screaming.”

The familiar turn of phrase makes Carlos’s skin prickle. “Where’d you hear that, Eli?”

“Oh. Just something people say.”

Right. Carlos takes a firm grip on his thoughts. “Okay, let’s —” he begins, but before he can finish, a hollow crash echoes through the walls of the converted warehouse. He whips around, instinctively putting himself between the door and the members of his team. Another crash. A series of crashes.

“The fuck is that?” demands Marianne, shaken out of her calm.

“Sounds like someone’s playing ‘shave and a haircut’ with a battering ram.” Eli’s grinning when Carlos looks back at him, feral. “You want me to turn the security system all the way up?”

“No.”

“But it’d be perfect for —”

“You heard him, kid, don’t make me stuff this wrench down your throat,” Dave sighs.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, stop being so childish, both of you —”

Carlos holds up a hand. _Quiet._ They obey grudgingly, but he can feel their worried tension thrumming wordlessly at his back. The faucet chuckles to itself, mocking, choked syllables of water.

Another muffled impact. Then a voice, fuzzed at the edges with amplification, thrown against the air like a punch: “We know you’re in there, Carlos the Investigation-Obstructing Scientist! If you come out now, I’ll leave the door intact!”

“What do we do?” Phil almost mouths it.

Carlos makes the same gesture again. _Stay here._ Then he walks quickly out into the main room of the lab again and crosses to the door, carefully shedding his labcoat on the way.

Doesn’t look back.

Now, or in the next few minutes, Night Vale Community Radio will be switching from the traditionally incomprehensible noon programming (this week, it’s “newly-laid asphalt drying under the heat of a distant and ultimately uncaring sun”) to the welcoming, dark run of piano notes that always introduces Cecil’s show. And he isn’t able to listen, to be one of Cecil’s _listeners_ even if he can’t be any more than that, because he’s walking out the front door of his rented workplace to confront four facelessly looming Secret Policemen.

They are figures out of some nightmare, and at the same time they are utterly ridiculous and Carlos doesn’t know how to react to that. Blowdart vests, shoulder-length capes, and balaclavas made completely out of leather, like some sort of bizarre fetish gear. He’s seen these people commit brutalities as emotionlessly as any crooked L.A. cop, but they wear ornate ceremonial daggers on their belts along with arrays of tiny devices he doesn’t even know the use of. There’s no sign of whatever they were using to pound on the door, and that’s unsettling, to say the least.

If they’re going to shoot him, they can do it right here, in plain sight, and there won’t even be any sideways looks from the people who live on this street, let alone a criminal trial. Night Vale knows how to look the other way. Night Vale drew Carlos here, but that doesn’t mean it might not also get him killed. That its _purpose_ might not be to get him killed.

He hopes it isn’t all going to end like this.

That would be... well.

Disappointing.

The understatement makes him bite his lip to keep down a smile. He doesn’t know what might set them off, and while he’s not precisely defenseless, he doesn’t have any illusions about his ability to fight four men at once, let alone four men armed to the proverbial teeth.

He tries to look completely blank. Fails, probably, because they’re all eyeing him like prey. Pretends, instead, that this is an experiment and he’s only here to observe their behavior. _Okay, now show me how you usually arrest someone. Whatever the standard procedure is. And mark._

The leader stirs, then fixes Carlos with a piercing blue gaze. “I see you’ve decided, for once, to be sensible. Put out your hands.”

“No,” Carlos says, softly.

“What?” Danger in that one snapped syllable, a thread about to break.

“I said no.”

“Do you have any idea,” in a rasping whisper, “to whom you are speaking?”

“Officer Ben, you didn’t disguise your voice, or your eyes, either.” His own voice sounds like it belongs to a stranger. Light, sweet tone to disguise his suddenly fast heartbeat. “And I’ll come with you willingly. If you tell me why.”

“It’s the _principle_ of the thing,” hisses the Secret Police officer. “We don’t tell people why we’re arresting them.”

“You don’t offer not to break people’s doors down, either, do you? Isn’t that a little unusual?”

Officer Ben glares. Steps closer, forcing Carlos to lift his chin if he wants to maintain eye contact. “You’re fucked this time,” he breathes. “You’ve got this one chance, and I think you’ll blow it. You’re an outsider, no matter how long you stay here. Maybe they’ll even give me the honor of assisting at your punishment, if you take this tone when you’re talking to them. Now, clever scientist, _put out your hands._ If you refuse again, I’ll just have to explain how you were shot while escaping. Sean, the blindfold.”

Oh well.

Worth a try.

If there are any of the Council’s haunting tricks about his abduction — tendrils of visible purple smoke or tiny flashes of daytime lightning — he doesn’t see or sense them. He’s too busy trying to hold in his panic. It’s like trying to carry water between shaking hands. Frigid shivers spill out and slip down his spine.

Fighting back would be worse than useless, would earn him something nastier than bruises. He gives one convulsive shudder when they touch him, pulling his arms behind him. The only sound he marks is the tiny snick of the catch on the handcuffs. Everything else is submerged in an internal white noise, a battering of blood in his ears.

He hates it when people see him cry, especially bullies like Officer Ben. So he closes his eyes when the tears come, the miraculous cold shock of them against skin that’s only just beginning to find its desert balance.

Restrained and overpowered, once again someone else’s tool — _walk here, stand there, don’t say a word_ — he ought to be at least putting up some last-ditch pretense that this doesn’t scare him. He can’t. He just shivers. As they herd him down some unexpectedly twisted path. As they stop him, to wait for what has to be nearly five minutes, muttered comments passing between them in some sort of code.

At least they haven’t put a gun in his hands.

The sound of the helicopter, the heavy insect burr of its rotors, gives him a clean, sharp freeze-frame of his nightmare, of a choir of decay rising from inside a deerskin suitcase and a face too terrible, or too beautiful, to allow memory.

He’s actually drifting a bit by the time they touch down, high on adrenaline and the aftermath of the panic, muscles so locked up that they don’t at first respond when he tries to follow the snapped command that he get to his feet. Someone whips the hood away from his head, impatiently; on the second try, he manages to stand.

A flat rooftop. Lowering clouds. And, spread out below, sprayed across the street in sprawling red paint, a message:

RUN

RUN

FORGET YOUR CHILDREN

LEAVE BEHIND THE WEAK

RUN

The last _N_ trails off, ragged, as though the person responsible had decided to follow his own advice halfway through the last word. It’s too absurd. Carlos coughs up a laugh, paper-thin and pathetic, but with enough momentum to shove himself back in the direction of full consciousness.

Frighteningly, the laugh is echoed, not by any of the masked Secret Policemen, but by a child, standing beside a door Carlos hadn’t noticed before.

What a little girl of five or six might be doing by herself on a roof is a question that only flares in his mind briefly before being snuffed out like a candle flame. The child’s eyes are like the windows of an empty house, blank and filmy, and her ragged clothing bears a mark that his eyes refuse to focus on for more than a moment. Not an ordinary child at all, but one of the City Council’s messengers — perhaps something that only looks like a child, the way the Director only looks like a man.

Before he can do more than draw in one, oddly chilled breath, there’s a firm hand against his back, shoving him forward, and a simultaneous tug as the cuffs are unlocked and pulled free.

“Go on then,” Officer Ben says, grudgingly. “Oh, and don’t feed the children, unless you want them to make a mess that won’t be cleaned up in a hurry.”

“Where are you going?” Carlos hears himself say, almost dreamily.

“Observation duty. And remember, even if they release you without sanctions, I’ll be watching. See you around. One way or another,” he adds, significantly. When Carlos doesn’t turn back, he walks away, footsteps echoing across the roof, and his minions follow.

The child solemnly puts out a hand and beckons. In Carlos’s peripheral vision, hanging like a smoke-trail: _RUN._

He obeys the gesture, head half-bowed, trying to catch up with a frantic train of thought that appears to have left him at an abandoned station the moment he heard the battering on the lab door.

Distantly, he hopes that his team are all right.

That they ran.

Led through darkness, Carlos stumbles several times, until a confiding, wasted little hand slips into his and clasps it tightly.

The messenger child tugs him down what seems to be an infinite number of staircases, through muffled, silent hallways. He can hear his own breathing, but he can’t feel hers. He tries to analyze his own emotions.

A cloying sorrow, that he’s too late to prevent whatever happened to her.

Fear, largely for himself, being delivered to the City Council like a secondhand package.

Curiosity.

Oh. Thank the angels. Or fate. Or whatever indescribable force might be looking out for him at the moment. He’s delighted to be curious again. Clutches the feeling to him. It’s rather like putting his arms out and trying to capture a humming swarm of bees, and it makes him laugh with relief. The child doesn’t react — not even a twitch.

Light, finally, leaping up ahead. Candlelight, flickering and warm, and with it the dim, grandiose colors of a room furnished with old-fashioned splendor. Here is the heart of City Hall — not the modern anteroom he saw at the entrance of the building, but the ancient rotunda where only those invited to audiences may enter. The paintings on the curved ceiling are somehow both explicitly frightening and incomprehensible at the same time.

And eight — no, nine — people standing still at the center. Too still.

The members of the City Council look almost ordinary. They’re dressed like what they are: professional small-town people, stars in a lesser firmament. Business-casual clothing, restrained jewelry, antiquated haircuts. Half of them are men and half of them are women, and Carlos is still trying to figure out how that can possibly be right when the Council member on the far left notices his presence.

He nods. Raises his free hand in a tentative salute. Tries not to jump out of his skin when all nine heads turn to him with eerie simultaneity.

“CARLOS THE SCIENTIST,” they say, voices overlapping, and then, “APPROACH US.”

He takes a step, and his vision doubles. Trebles. A black chorus of images that swamp him suddenly. They might not be single, self-contained people, after all. They might be a multitude. They might be beams of some kind of power, focused down onto this spot with a giant’s magnifying glass. They might have sprung into being the moment he walked through the door.

Or they might be old.

They might be unspeakably old.

The assault on his senses is sharp and staggering and he stumbles, one hand out, anticipating the impact, when the child tugs on his sleeve. Pushing something crumpled into his hand.

A blindfold.

 

He closes his eyes. Takes off his glasses. Ties it himself, with shaking fingers, folding it over twice. Attempts to craft the illusion that he is in complete and merciful darkness, like a college student with a sleep-mask trying to doze through his roommate’s study time. At least this time he doesn’t have to pretend not to hear the accompanying music. A nightmarish negative image of what he’s just seen appears to be burned into his optic nerves, but at least there are no Fall Out Boy songs assaulting his eardrums on infinite loop.

He manages a shaky laugh, a laugh that breaks up too high in his ears.

“I do have a last name,” he tells the City Council. “Is it really too much to ask that someone in this town remembers that? Not that I — not that I _mind,_ socially speaking, if you just call me Carlos, but —”

“WE DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR NAME,” dismissively. He can imagine them waving off his complaint, a dizzying overlap of hands, or things that stand in for hands. “ACTUALLY THE REST OF YOU WOULD BE REALLY BORING TOO, IF IT WASN’T FOR YOUR SIGHT. LIKE DO YOU EVER GET INVITED TO ANYTHING COOL?”

“Well, this one time the entire Night Vale City Council kidnapped me and gave me a private audience for some reason.”

“OH RIGHT. WE SUPPOSE THAT COUNTS. ARE YOU ALWAYS THIS RUDE?”

Carlos swallows hard. “Um, yeah, it sort of happens, especially when I’m in mortal peril. I’d guess there’s at least a 70% correlation between situations where —”

“STOP BABBLING AND PAY ATTENTION. WE APPRECIATE YOUR INSTINCTIVE GROVELING, BUT THERE IS NO TIME FOR FURTHER ABASEMENT. WE HAVE A JOB OFFER FOR YOU.”

Carlos tries to swallow again, but all the saliva in his mouth has dried up. “I do... already _have_ a job,” he points out, wondering how long his legs will hold him up. “I’m a scientist.”

The City Council sighs, exasperation whistling at slightly different pitches through nine throats. “OKAY, OKAY, SO CALL IT SOMETHING ELSE. A PROJECT. OR A COMMAND. OR A TRIBUTE, TO PREVENT YOUR LIFE FROM BEING DISAPPOINTINGLY SHORT.” With the blindfold on, it’s easier to fool himself that the Council’s voices are human, in some disjointed fashion, but the threat comes out with a perfect indifference, chilling as the void. “DISAPPOINTINGLY FOR _YOU,_ THAT IS. WE DON’T REALLY CARE.”

He ought to already have fallen to his knees. It should be impossible that he’s still standing and still curious and still fighting the impulse to laugh. It’s happening anyway. Never mind ordering his execution, or sentencing him to the Abandoned Mineshaft — or worse, embracing him somehow and drawing him into a mode of reality that would break the tethers of his mind entirely. The City Council is asking him for a favor.

Asking _him_ for a favor.

_Deal, or deal in?_

He takes a deep breath, a tighter hold on the earpiece of his glasses. “Okay, this project, then,” he says, carefully. “If I were to take it on, what would it pay?”

Another almost-measurable silence, surface tension high. Carlos waits for the Council to lose its temper, for the strike of some arcane judgment. He almost wishes he could take the blindfold off again, just to see what his death would look like as it came for him, what he might understand about it in the last moments before oblivion.

Instead, the answer comes back quietly, one grudging word, as if among themselves they have just come to a difficult, if necessary, decision.

“CITIZENSHIP.”

The way out of the audience chamber and back into the modern part of City Hall is winding.

The messenger child guides Carlos again, tugging at his hand with something that might be impatience or jubilation, as if on her way to the playground.

Behind the two of them, the City Council walks, or slithers, or drifts, or all three at once, taking up more space than even nine people should, casting shadows in every direction, chattering quietly among themselves, separately and in scattered unison.

Carlos doesn’t strain his ears to pick up _that_ conversation. He is also careful not to look around. The blindfold dangles from his hand like a peeled-off pair of safety goggles.

Everything seems deserted — conference rooms empty, desks unmanned, halls echoing, and a disquieting hissing sound coming from the direction of the auditorium. City Hall is a husk. The back of Carlos’s mind, the endless reel of images, flashes him the graffitoed warning from the pavement again — _FORGET YOUR CHILDREN, LEAVE BEHIND THE WEAK_ — and his heart rate stutters, a spike of adrenaline that gets through even his current state of shock.

Of course they haven’t told him everything. No briefing he’s been to has ever included all the facts. He used to take that as a challenge — in an academic setting, it usually worked for him. In Night Vale it might be lethal. But he has no idea what questions he should ask.

As they spill out onto the wide front steps of the building, he decides to ask anyway. He’s actually about to turn, about to swap glasses for blindfold again (he certainly doesn’t want to see what the Council members look like in broad early-afternoon daylight) when he realizes that the steps are not as deserted as the inside of the building was.

There’s a press conference going on, a bustle of people in that peculiar Night Vale mixture of polite professional dress and clothing so anachronistically misplaced that Carlos can’t recognize it at all. The group standing before the microphones are all wearing heavy brocade robes of a surprising mustard color and expressions that fall halfway between fear and resentment.

The approach of the City Council sends a small shockwave through the crowd. Three of the reporters turn at once, disclosing familiar faces. The first is Leann Hart of the Daily Journal, who would look demure in her flower-print dress and sensible heels, if it weren’t for the huge axe she’s nonchalantly resting against one shoulder. The second is one of her colleagues, whose name might be Mike or Mark or something similar; he has such a catastrophic speech impediment that Carlos isn’t sure how he manages to conduct any interviews.

The third is Cecil Palmer.

Of course.

The messenger child lets go of Carlos’s hand again, and he seizes the excuse to look away from Cecil, from the delighted welcome in Cecil’s dark eyes. He glances down to find the little girl moving away from him. She winks, deliberately, to show him that a single word has been written, or tattooed, on her left eyelid: _CAUTION._ Then she whirls and runs back the way they came, disappearing into the darkness behind the double doors.

Carlos manages to force his feet forward, until he’s standing near a whiteboard covered with splotchy notations in a red substance he hopes is ketchup. He can’t help a glance at this, but it doesn’t make any sense. He can’t help a glance at Cecil, either, and that’s even more unhelpful. The reporter has turned to face the Council, self-consciously brushing the unruly length of his bangs out of his face, but he’s smiling. _That_ smile.

He pulls himself together abruptly. Ignores the heat creeping up into his own face.

“Hello,” he manages. “What — what’s going on?”

“This is a secret meeting,” replies a mustard-robed man, “about the street cleaners. Or it might be a press conference. A secret press conference.”

“How can a press conference be a secret?”

“What do you know?” one of the man’s companions hisses. “We are the _experts_ on street cleaners; the City Council captured us with their dark power and dragged us here to testify. You, you’re just that scientist, right?”

“ ’S no need to be insulting,” mumbles Mark-or-Matt, behind Leann’s back.

Cecil laughs softly, without turning around. “That’s hardly an insult,” he says, the Voice dulcet. “Science is a distinguished calling. Just as distinguished as being a threat expert, or reporting the news, for that matter. Do be professional.”

“Don’t _talk_ so much, Cecil,” Leann stage-whispers, with satisfaction.

The City Council clears its collective throat — a sound that promptly tops Carlos’s mental list of weird things he’s heard recently. “EX _CUSE_ US,” in sarcastic chorus. Everyone snaps back to attention. “WE _WOULD_ LIKE TO WITNESS THIS INTERVIEW.”

“Right, uh, continue, please, Journeyman,” Cecil says, unruffled.

“What was the question?”

“In your opinion, what is the best strategy for the citizens of Night Vale to use in defending themselves against the street cleaners?”

“The best strategy?” The first robed man looks almost outraged. “Well, the thing is, there’s no escape. Nothing to be gained. Street cleaners aren’t fooled by bunker walls. They focus on heat and movement. We’re all doomed, really. I’d say our official recommendation is to be _dead already,”_ and he claps a hand to his mouth. Carlos thinks for a moment that he’s making a dramatic gesture — _no, it can’t be, I’ve said too much_ — until all of the others follow suit.

The crowd steps back, horrified, as they fall.

Cecil, eyes wide in alarm, steps forward instead, putting one hand out reflexively, but it’s too late. Some of them are still convulsing weakly, froth staining the front of their robes, but it’s obvious they are beyond help.

“WELL.” The City Council sounds nonplussed. “THAT’S INCONVENIENT.”

“I hope,” says Cecil, calmly, but with a roughness lurking under the words, “that no one here is going to take that advice.” He kneels, heedless of possible damage to the fabric of his starkly pressed slacks, and gently closes the eyes of the nearest corpse. Something about the gesture unlocks Carlos’s breathing again — just in time, because the City Council are eyeing him invitingly. He can feel their gazes burning a hole in his back.

“WE DON’T SUPPOSE YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO ADD?” in haunting query.

“N-no,” Carlos stammers, “I — I don’t. N-not of a strictly scientific nature, I mean. Um. Sorry.”

“Just as well, because we only have until 2:30,” Leann says, bracingly.

“Oh, damn,” and Cecil sits back on his heels.

“WE REALLY OUGHT TO LOOK INTO OUR SCHEDULE,” the City Council muses. “WE HAVE A FEELING THERE’S AT LEAST ONE VACATION PLAN WE HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT. OH, WELL. DISPERSE, CITIZENS. REPORTERS. SCIENTISTS. LEAVE US TO GET COFFEE AND CHECK OUR FACEBOOK MESSAGES. WE HAVEN’T HAD TIME TO DO _ANYTHING_ THIS MORNING.”

Carlos can’t imagine the City Council drinking coffee, but he’s more than happy to obey the order. He steps away through the crowd at a quick pace, stuffing the blindfold awkwardly into his pocket. Stops, without turning, when a hand finds his shoulder.

“Carlos? Please, wait a moment.”

“Yeah,” he says, standing still. “What is it?”

Cecil doesn’t reply immediately, perhaps waiting for Carlos to turn to him, and then he steps around and into Carlos’s field of vision, his eyes narrowed in concern.

“I don’t mean to be, uh, un _professional,_ Carlos, but you look... I mean, it seems you’re in a hurry? I have to get back to the station, I could drop you off.”

“You don’t have to feel obligated —”

“I don’t,” Cecil says, with a gentle urgency that tugs at the inside of Carlos’s chest. “But if we’re going the same direction, it makes sense, right, scientifically? Less expended energy?”

“Uh...” Carlos can’t actually think of anything to say to that, and something about the word _scientifically,_ flavored with Cecil’s characteristic inflections, is causing further problems for his already weak knees. “Right. I... see what you mean.”

Damn.

The inside of Cecil’s car — the 1960s Rambler with its unreadable runic license plate — is as carefully maintained as the outside, but something about it bothers Carlos and he’s too tired from the aftermath of the Council’s abduction to put his finger on it. He looks down for his watch, and is dismayed to find that it’s gone, only the faintest band of lighter skin around his wrist as evidence that its frayed strap was ever there.

“What — what time is it?” He forces calm into his voice, trying to take it down from the squeak of dismay it wants to jump to.

Climbing in, Cecil doesn’t even seem to notice. He leans over to check the dashboard clock (likewise unreadable, to anyone who never studied Unmodified Sumerian in college) and the stubbled curve of his throat is unexpectedly beautiful as he tilts his head. “1:26. I’m running very late. Don’t mind the seatbelt, it’s broken.”

“Oh,” inanely, and Carlos stops fiddling with the seatbelt clip and sits back.

Cecil glances behind them, and then reverses out of the parking space in a graceful tight sweep, shifting gears with practiced nonchalance and running a red light on his way off Main.

He drives with serene ferocity, taking curves just fast enough to make Carlos grab for the door, slowing easily to let one pedestrian pelt past them, screaming, at a crosswalk, and then building up a restless floating speed again. His nearness is a physical disturbance, a gravity competing with the pull of the earth. Carlos should never have agreed to this. He doesn’t want it to stop.

He doesn’t speak until Cecil’s turning into the station parking lot, and then, “Uh. Does stopsign immunity also apply to stop _lights?”_

“The Sheriff’s Secret Police are actually not very clear about that,” Cecil says, “but I’ve never been pulled over. Perks of the job, I suppose.” He hesitates, then turns the key as if the snap of it were punctuation to some private afterthought. “Carlos, where are you going?”

“Right now?” Carlos shifts uncomfortably. “Why?”

Cecil lets out a harsh little sigh, rests his forehead on the steering wheel for a moment. “I’m sorry,” closing his eyes. “That came out wrong. Let me, uh, let me rephrase that. Do you have _somewhere_ to go?”

“I don’t understand what you —”

Carlos is abruptly cut off as Cecil turns to him, catching his arm. “It’s a rude question and I apologize, but I have to know. It’s Street Cleaning Day, the fulfilment of the prophecy is finally upon us, and I have to know. You’re my colleague now and you’re not... not used to this.”

“Cecil...”

“You don’t have to tell me _where_ it is if you don’t want to, I would never intrude on your privacy, but I can’t just go into the station and seal the door unless I know that you — I mean, that — that _all_ of my friends are prepared for survival.”

“Cecil, I — it’s okay,” Carlos says. His mouth has gone unfairly dry again at the look in the reporter’s eyes, the competing intensity and shyness. He wants to put a hand on Cecil’s arm, in return, but the angle is awkward and it would be just intimate enough to get him into serious trouble.

“It’s okay?” Cecil repeats. “You aren’t offended? That I asked?”

“No, of course not,” Carlos says, reassured when Cecil’s cautious smile breaks ground. “I, um, I’ve just had a difficult morning. I lost my watch, too, no idea where it could’ve gone.”

“Oh,” with quick sympathy, “that’s too bad.”

“Don’t worry about it. And don’t worry about me. I’ve got somewhere to go. Hopefully, my team’s already there. I’ll be fine, I’m always fine.”

“Is that a scientist thing?” Cecil’s smile has lost its caution entirely. “I’m trying to figure out, you know, what it must be _like_ to be a scientist. What a scientist _is.”_

Carlos is startled into a laugh. “What a scientist _is?_ Like, you’re making a list?”

Cecil laughs too, not the dark, quiet little chuckle he sometimes allows himself, but a sudden, genuine snort of laughter. “Yeah, I’m making a list. That’s what I do when I’m researching for a story. Like, for example, the first thing Marcus Vansten is is rich, or the second thing about baristas is that they travel in packs of no fewer than three, or the seventeenth thing about space-and-time portals is that they make a really cool sound when you get a microphone close to them —”

“You’re making this up.”

Cecil shakes his head, but he hasn’t stopped laughing either, and the pressure of his fingers changes, sliding to encircle Carlos’s wrist lightly. “Oh, _am_ I? You want to see my notebooks, smart guy?”

Carlos takes in a shivering breath. He can’t give in. He can’t put Cecil in danger.

Oh, but it’s _so_ tempting.

He wants Cecil’s hand woven confidently into his hair, not just braceleting his wrist. He can guess at this distance how good Cecil’s mouth would taste: coffee, the biting spice of the strong cigarettes he favors, maybe the last ghost of liquor from yesterday night. Most of all, though, he wants the Voice against his own lips, that first soft moan of surprise his to swallow, more intoxicating than anything that might linger on the other man’s breath.

But the certainty that he could die today, doing the Director’s bidding or the Council’s, bobs to the surface of his mind. And does he want to do the right thing, or does he want to steal the last moment they’re having together? The last moment they might have together as two people, and not as narrator and subject? The last moment they might have together at all?

“Carlos?” His expression must have changed, because Cecil is looking at him with concern.

Last chance to salvage some sort of professional demeanor, but he can’t help the warmth. He turns his hand within Cecil’s grasp, so that he can clasp it. Not quite a handshake, not quite a farewell. “Tell me, before I go: what’s the first thing about Street Cleaning Day?”

Cecil looks down at their joined hands, the laughter sliding from his face as if it’s suddenly too heavy to stick. A silence, perhaps of the same weight. Then, “The first thing about Street Cleaning Day,” he says, somber and almost, almost as detached as if he were on air, “is that not everyone survives.”

Cecil had told him that it would be better to run.

Carlos had obeyed, but he can’t help stopping, across the street and out of immediate view, to make sure Cecil makes it inside safely.

A triangle of shadow, with its promise of January cold once the sun sets, falls softly over his face as he leans around the corner. Cecil’s just turning the handle of the station door — it was apparently all the way closed, for once — and as Carlos watches, he realizes that the red color of the door isn’t ceramic, or layers of paint over metal.

It’s made of cut bloodstone. A _single_ bloodstone, the biggest one he’s ever observed — and now that Marianne, who has made social and religious customs in Night Vale her specific study, has had time to begin her research on the use of bloodstone and bloodstone circles, Carlos knows the name has nothing to do with the color.

To enter a small bloodstone circle, you have to make an offering of blood — a cut finger, usually.

To open a bloodstone _door,_ especially one that size, how much blood do you need?

Carlos lingers long enough to wish that the street cleaners, whatever they are, are incapable of bleeding.

Then he turns back to running.

His car is parked in front of the mostly-quiet apartment building where he lives on the ground floor, not too far from either the lab or the station.

On a normal day, the distance would give him no trouble. On a normal day, he would have made a loop through the Cactus Bloom neighborhood, giving up the direct path in order to avoid the dog park.

Today, unfortunately, he can’t afford that.

The wind is picking up as he crosses from Fourth to Somerset and slows to a cautious jog. The area around the dog park always seems to be shadowed, more shadowed than the trees inside can account for. Most of the people he’s seen in this area cross to the other side of the street without even thinking about it, obeying the City Council’s orders. Carlos should hedge his bets and follow that example, despite the lack of helicopters overhead or observers nearby. A second run-in with the Sheriff’s Secret Police within twenty-four hours would be enough to put him over his limit.

He’s actually stepping off the curb to do it when there’s a massive clash and clatter ahead. An indignant cry of pain from a human throat. Then a horrible dogsound, a heavy crescendo of barks, each one like something being torn brutally from the air, and he’s spinning back up into a run instead, straight for the intersection of Earl and Somerset.

It’s either not as bad as he thought, or worse. Two municipal trash cans have been overturned, but the trash spilling out, red-flagged and twitching, seems too stunned to attack yet. The figures struggling on the sidewalk, in shadow, both look human. One hulking, its back to Carlos.

_“Hey!”_ he yells. The barks from inside the dog park are drowning him out, but something — maybe peripheral vision — catches the attacker’s attention. A pallid, masklike face under a low-brimmed hat rotates in his direction. _“Yeah, I’m talking to you!”_

“Help me, please,” chokes the other, backing away from the fight as if suddenly pushed.

The man in the hat turns on Carlos, raises doughy fists.

The first punch is telegraphed clearly and Carlos fades with it, just enough that it’s his shoulder absorbing the blow and not his face. Dull pain immediately sinks its claws into his left arm.

He lets it help his stagger, toward the dog park fence. Has time to think _fuck, I’m screwed if he has a gun_ before the man in the hat throws a second punch, heavyweight cross, faster than he expected. Carlos drops, breathing hard and more careful of his trajectory than his landing. Manages not to touch the fence.

His opponent isn’t so lucky.

Both the man in the hat, nailed in place by the fence’s high voltage, and the woman, crouching at the edge of the sidewalk, shriek in surprise and terror. Sliding out of his enemy’s reach, Carlos pushes himself to one knee in the gutter, slapping away a tendril of living trash as it reaches for him.

The man in the hat rolls his gaze toward Carlos as if to mark him forever, and then there is an even more awful predator-noise, a kind of viscous _chomp,_ and he is dragged bodily over the fence and gone, caught up by a shadow too fast for Carlos’s eyes to follow.

The barking falls abruptly silent.

When Carlos looks back over at the woman he’s just, against all odds, managed to rescue, she’s staring at him with an intense concentration that might outright unnerve him under normal circumstances. The pain-pulse he can feel in his left arm isn’t helping. He tries to look reassuring and fails. Obviously. Both of her eyebrows go up.

“The _fuck_ just happened?” she demands, voice feathered with a throaty rasp.

“Uh, basically... it’s a _really_ bad idea to touch that fence,” says Carlos.

She rolls her eyes. “I _got_ that, dude. I mean _you._ Where did you come from? This whole place is deserted, all except for those fuckers in hats chasing _my_ ass, and then you show up out of nowhere and like... hey, watch out!”

“Thanks.” Carlos slaps away another trash-tendril, gets unsteadily to his feet. “Are you all right?”

“Actually, I’ve survived worse,” she says, following his example with a slight wince. “ ‘Worse’ doesn’t mean ‘more bizarre,’ though. I really hope I haven’t lost my shit this time. Can you answer a question for me, Mysterious and Strange Hero?”

“I’ll do my best, if you can answer a question for me.” Carlos shoves the nearest trash-barrel further away with his foot.

“Okay, deal. What the fuck town is this?”

Carlos can’t help a grin. “This is Night Vale. Town with the highest quotient of bizarrity in America. Welcome,” and he bows, flourishing one hand.

“Thanks, I think.” She rubs her bruised neck with a rueful finger. “What’s your question, MASH?”

“Do you have the time?”

“Um...” Fishing in the pocket of her jeans, she comes up with a cracked cell phone. Tapping its screen, so that the square of light illuminates her face with a faint blue tint, “1:51.”

“Uh oh.” Carlos glances uneasily around. “We need to get moving. Hide. Preferably somewhere away from the dog park.”

“That’s a _dog park?”_

“I can explain, just, _please_ come with me. Something dangerous is about to start happening.”

_“ ‘Start_ happening’?” She chokes out a laugh. “MASH, you’re a one-man show.”

“Thanks, I think,” he says. “Can you run?”

“Been running all day, haven’t dropped yet.”

“Good. This way.”

She follows him, jogging easily at his side. “What’re you gonna do if another one of those fuckers in hats shows up?”

“Um. Run faster?”

Another eyeroll, this one amused. Satirically, “Genius.”

They save their breath for running. Carlos wonders if his new companion was ever on a track team; she’s certainly used less of her breath than he has by the time they reach the sunsplashed porch of the apartment building.

The front gate has been propped open with an stack of miscellaneous junk — old Big Rico’s pizza boxes, the wheelless, skeletal frame of a child’s bike, a trash bag held closed with a twist of wire.

“Is that stuff gonna attack us?”

Carlos runs bemused hands through his hair, pushing unruly, half-grown-out curls off his face. “That... wasn’t here when I left.”

“So, maybe?”

“I don’t see any red flags. It’s probably safe. Here,” and he steps past it quickly, into the hallway. “I guess people are in a hurry today.”

“Yeah, where _is_ everybody?”

“Somewhere safe, I hope,” and he’s scanning doors and windows in the quick back-and-forth way that’s become second nature by now. All primly shut, several with added chains and barriers. Behind one, music playing: clear swirl of piano notes like leaves on water, a faintly familiar man’s voice.

The key to apartment 25 is in his left pants pocket, and he hums the required three notes to it in what he hopes is a comforting pitch before turning it, knob and then deadbolt.

“This your place?” She’s regarding him dubiously.

“Yeah, there’s a first-aid kit in the kitchen. Probably both of us could use it.” He stops, aware of her hesitation. “What is it?”

“I don’t mean to cast aspersions on your manly honor or whatever, but I just met you like ten minutes ago, and this is the fucking scariest town I have ever seen.”

“Hm. Point taken.” Carlos bites his lip in thought, then offers her the key. “Would this help?”

She looks from the key to his face, intent, and then nods, swipes it off his palm. “Better than nothing.”

The inside of the apartment has a calming effect on both of them. Minimally furnished and with the blinds drawn, it’s a neutral white space, filtered sunlight printing tiny, mellow stripes on the walls.

Carlos switches on the light above the sink, pulling the first aid kit down from its cupboard. He’s about to reach into it when she pushes his hand aside and picks up a flashlight. “Let me, okay? Be easier if we check each other. Besides, no offense, you _have_ been acting a bit like a guy with a concussion.”

Submitting, Carlos takes stock of his guest. Her shirt and jeans are dirty and ripped, not artfully but with the unmistakable small damages of climbing or fighting. Her hair is natural, a soft black cluster of curls braided back from the determined planes of her dark face. Under the fluorescent glow from the sink light, the cruel necklace of her bruises stands out sharply.

“Are you sure your throat is going to be all right?” he asks.

“You an M.D., MASH?”

“No.”

“Well, then your guess is good as mine. Bastard didn’t get far though, he’d barely grabbed me when you showed up.” She taps the collar of his faded plaid shirt. “Better take this off all the way. If that arm is sprained or something, you’ve got a problem.”

Carlos struggles out of the sleeve, still watching her face. After a moment she glances at him, sidelong. “Okay, your turn,” handing him the flashlight. “You wanna know who I am, right? Why I’m enough of a mess to get stuck in this unbelievable situation? You can _ask,_ I just might not answer.”

“It’s a secret?” he hazards, watching her pupils follow the light.

_“No,_ you dork, I just don’t _know._ They showed up at my _work_ yesterday, men in hats, like the one that just got eaten out there. Only the first ones, they had guns. Handed me this clipboard with paperwork on it, like it was official business they were kidnapping me. Said I had to report to this guy who was running some kind of big project, location censored, lots of long words. I went like I was going along with them, and then I tried to shake them. Hit one in the back of the neck with the clipboard and just booked.”

“And then you escaped?”

“No, _then_ they caught me and threw me in the back of their car.” Mordant humor in her voice, but she shivers at the memory and steps away from him. “Look, uh, can I have some water? I just remembered how fucking parched I am.”

“Of course.” Carlos reaches up into the open cupboard for a glass, hands it to her. “I’m sorry, but people from the outside don’t often end up here, and I just — I find it fascinating. You don’t have to go through this if you don’t want to —”

“I want to,” she interrupts. “I keep thinking this is some kind of crazy dream, and every time I think that, I make a mistake. Make too many mistakes and they’re gonna catch me again. Will this water turn me into a zombie or something?”

“No, no, it’s quite safe. Compliant with EPA standards, well below maximum contaminant levels, no mysterious extra ingredients. I’ve seen the test results. For all three rounds of the tests.”

“Wow, your job must be worse than mine,” she says, but takes a cautious sip.

“Keep going. Dehydration in the desert isn’t something you want to mess with.” He picks up the half-empty water bottle next to the fridge and follows her example.

After a moment, refilling the glass, she resumes. “I thought they were gonna rape me,” with a heartbreaking little crack in her casual tone. “That would’ve been — well. I couldn’t see it ending any other way than stuffed into a dumpster somewhere. But they acted like I was a package they were delivering, you know?”

“Yes. I do.” Carlos is squeezing the water bottle too tightly, his injured shoulder throbbing in protest. He makes himself put it down.

“I got out early this morning. They didn’t tie me tightly enough. They parked out by this diner with a bright green sign and just left me in the back seat, didn’t even notice when I kicked the window out. I mean, this town’s small, but I thought I could hide. Or call the police. But I dialed 911 and nothing happened except for this screeching sound on the other end, and it was fucking _deserted._ And wherever I went I’d see at least one of them, and it’s like they all have the same face —” She broke off, shuddering, and drank more deeply.

“Hey,” Carlos says gently. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah?” She looks at him over the rim of the cup, sniffing tears back under control. “You gonna hop into your cute little red car out there and go take down the lunatic who had me abducted? Dude, you don’t even know my _name._ I saw you by that dog park place. You heard me yell and you just ran right into that fight like it might be cool to die for a total stranger. You’re Charles Darwin’s worst nightmare. How the fuck are you still alive?”

“Sheer luck of the draw, probably,” Carlos admits. “And you’re right, it was rude of me not to ask your name.”

“Rochelle Walters.” She sniffs again, rubs her eyes in one quick pass. “Or just Chelle, unless you’re introducing me on TV or something.”

“Okay. Chelle. I’m —”

He never gets to finish the sentence. An old-fashioned air-raid siren cuts him off, lifting its voice in the distance like a titan in distress.

And in its wake, the first screams.

2:48.

They stand in the bathroom of the apartment, breathing shallowly with a contagious fear, door shut against the assault of the sirens. Second time in one day, and Carlos has a feeling he’s going to have to leave Chelle here, just like he left his team earlier. It’s an unpleasant feeling, a pit-of-the-stomach heaviness.

“Can I borrow your phone?” he asks her.

She rolls her eyes. The sight heartens him. “Why don’t you have a phone, again?”

“Left it at work.”

“You’re hopeless,” she snorts, but passes over the cell phone.

He dials Phil’s number from memory. Waits out three rings before a wave of interference cuts the connection. Tries Dave’s, instead. Busy signal.

“Who are you calling? The police?”

“That would only make things worse, trust me.”

Chelle makes a face, but accepts this and kneels down to rummage under the sink, presumably looking for a tool heavy enough to double as a weapon. Carlos steps back to give her space. Marianne’s number yields the same busy signal. “Shit,” he mutters, and tries the most recent of Eli’s numbers he can remember.

_“The mobile customer you are trying to reach is unavailable,”_ chirps the familiar computerized recording. _“Please make sure you have performed your last phone bill sacrifice during the proper phase of the orbit of Mercury. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”_

“Damn it.”

Chelle reemerges from the cupboard with a clank, clutching a wrench he doesn’t remember leaving in there. “Your family out there?” she asks, apprehensive.

“No, my work colleagues. There’s a place they went to be safe, but I don’t know where it is. If they could tell me, maybe I could get you there before the street cleaners get here.”

_“Street_ cleaners? Is that some sort of code?”

“It might be. I’m actually not sure what they are.”

Chelle does not look mollified. “You aren’t some sort of government agent, are you?”

“I sincerely hope not.”

“That isn’t funny.”

“I’m not laughing,” snaps Carlos. “I came from outside Night Vale, too. I’ve had to agree to some things I don’t like very much in order to be here, but as far as I know —”

“Wait, you’re saying you came here on _purpose?”_

“Yes.”

“You _are_ mental,” she sighs.

“Yeah, so I’ve been told. Listen, lock the doors behind me, okay? If I can’t get you to where my team is, this is the safest place I can think of. And come back in here, in the bathroom, all right? Not in one of the closets. They, uh, they tend to move around or disappear, and I don’t know what would happen if somebody was inside at the time. Just hang on to the key —”

She’s shaking her head firmly. _“Whoa_ whoa whoa, hold the fucking phone. You are _not_ going out there alone.”

“I _have_ to go out there, Chelle, I made a promise.”

“To who? Cute girl? Cute guy? Hooded figure with some really nice lipstick? MASH, this is not the time for you to get all chivalrous and shit. You got a better chance of surviving with help. Whoever it is, we can tell them you did it all by yourself.”

“I can’t ask you to do something like that.”

“You didn’t ask, I’m _offering,_ okay? I don’t wanna sit in here by myself, in the dark, thinking about you maybe getting eaten, or shot, or whatever. And you can’t tell me what to do, like you’re the main character in a shitty action movie.” She grins at him, shakily, but with growing confidence. “But I _will_ hang on to the key, thank you very much — so you don’t get any bright ideas about locking me in.”

Carlos sighs. “Fair enough.”

The open corridor between the first-floor apartment doors is bright and empty. The sirens’ madsong runs on overhead, competing sinewaves of panic trying to drown each other out.

“Which direction is it, this place?” Chelle asks.

“Left, down Third Street. It’s about four blocks away, beside a converted warehouse. White walls, neon sign in the window. Like those pizza boxes, except misspelled.”

“What kind of a guy is Big Rico?”

Carlos looks down at her profile and smiles. “You’d probably get along with him pretty well. But he won’t be there now, not upstairs. You understand the plan?”

“Yeah, pretty basic, I guess, assuming we don’t suffocate. And these street cleaners don’t have guns.”

“I don’t think they have guns. I think it must be more complicated than that.”

She meets his eyes for a moment, troubled, and then visibly gathers herself. “Okay. Left?”

“Correct.”

“Let’s go, then,” and she’s running.

Carlos counts to three, and then follows.

They almost make it.

The loading zone in front of the lab is empty. The LED sign outside the First Rural Bank of Night Vale across the street is cycling through its display: _3:33 PM/ 69° F / AMEX SOULFORGE CARD 22% APR._ The screams still seem far away, if loud, and he’s only faintly beginning to hear a new sound, a sound like ocean waves, or an army in the distance.

It isn’t until he sees that there’s already blood on the sidewalk outside Big Rico’s that Carlos feels his heart sink. Becomes aware that he’s not alone.

Chelle isn’t looking back. The thick soles of her Docs crunch through broken glass as she grabs for the restaurant’s door. Does she not feel it? Is she out of range of whatever it is? _Good,_ he thinks savagely, _keep going, get out of here!_ He falters in his stride, not from exhaustion but from the overwhelming sensation that _something is watching him._

That maybe he’s had company for a while.

He might be dreaming again.

He can’t tell, and that frightens him.

The unique experience of perceiving exactly nothing — no temperature, no sound, nothing to see, nothing to feel — stops being interesting and starts being ominous. He was just somewhere, right? Somewhere with physical things to observe?

_Carlos, come back!_

Words tickling at his consciousness. He bats them away drowsily. Nothingness is easier. Much easier. More frightening, but easier. He’s getting used to being frightened, even when he doesn’t have a physical body.

There’s something in front of him. He considers it dreamily as it looms up, serpentlike, carved out of the void like a tooth, ready to consume him. Something in the midst of nothing. Something made out of nothing. Now that’s really interesting.

_Carlos! Carlos, can you hear me?_

If he had a mouth with which to frown in irritation, he would. Wherever those words are coming from — behind him? is there a behind here? — they’re interrupting his observations. Or his lack of observations. Pettishly, he wishes the voice would leave him alone.

_Carlos._ Carlos. _Wake up! I’m not leaving you alone, not like this..._

Cecil. Cecil’s voice.

The Voice.

The Voice that should be narrating this dream, or vision, or whatever it is. Why did he just think it sounded like an intruder? And why is it so frantic? Can Cecil not see him? But Cecil always sees everything when he dreams. Cecil always describes everything to him.

_Carlos, perfect Carlos, please! Snap out of it!_

Something is wrong. Cecil’s frightened. Panicked, even.

He doesn’t want to turn. There’s something in front of him that he shouldn’t turn his back on. Something unspeakable.

But if Cecil needs his help, he has no other choice.

Carlos turns.

His perspective abruptly falls into place with solidity. He’s not floating bodiless somewhere. He’s not floating at all. His feet are firmly planted on concrete — in the middle of the street, no less — outside the lab. He’s surrounded by wreckage, and a rotten piscine smell like a dead tide gone out.

The sirens have fallen mute, and so have the screams.

The silence is so flawless, like thick glass, that he stops to savor it, taking a cautious step forward. Yep, his body still works, all present and accounted for, including one very pissed-off shoulder joint.

And, although there is blood splashed on the walls of Big Rico’s, and the bank sign has been knocked over, now displaying _4:54 PM/ 6 ° F /   EX SOULFORRR   CAR,_ the street is clean.

Carlos laughs out loud, for a brief and delicious moment forgetting all about his lost watch and the varieties of silence and the ringing aftermath of trauma in his ears.

“Night Vale,” he says, “never change,” and it might be his imagination that the sudden spritz of industrial sprinklers on the dead lawns around him, clean, silver, inexplicably-EPA-approved water sparkling in the late-afternoon sun, constitutes a reply.

Then again, it might not.

Inside Big Rico’s deserted storefront, he has one bad moment when he nearly trips on a pair of lifeless feet protruding from behind the bar-style counter, but the feet are clad in dirty white tennis shoes, not Docs, and belong to no one he knows. He shakes it off and slips into the kitchen, greeted by a strong smell of tomato sauce. Heads right to the industrial walk-in freezer, whose door is wedged open a crack.

She’s there, breathing hard, leaning against the icy wall of the compartment, her eyes wide. At sight of him, she catches her breath on an exhalation that mingles a laugh and a sob, drops her wrench, and knocks several hanging slabs of frozen meat aside to throw her arms around his neck.

“You bastard, I thought you were dead, it’s been like an hour! The fuck happened to you?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” he murmurs, bringing his arms up gingerly to return the unexpected embrace. “I’m so glad my plan worked for you, though.”

“You mean you weren’t sure?”

“I was like 75% sure. It was worth the risk, at least for me. And you _did_ insist.”

“I did,” admits Chelle, letting go and brushing ice crystals out of her hair. “So, what now? Are you sure the street cleaners are gone?”

“Well,” Carlos says, “the street is clean.”

She punches his arm, but she’s smiling.

People emerge into the last of the day blinking, creeping from their homes and their hiding places with deep caution. Some of them are crying. Some are just dazed. Others hum to themselves or croon soft words, holding the hands of their children or letting their own, empty hands fall to their sides.

Chelle’s face as she watches them is touched by wonder and a lingering trace of deep fear. “They’re people. Just _people,_ ” she says. “I can’t believe it. After those men in hats...”

“Yeah.” Carlos smiles as he sees faces he knows in the gathering, drifting crowd — there’s Abby Chang, who runs his favorite coffeeshop, and Big Rico with two enforcers trailing him like muscular shadows, and, farther off, the pair of Boy Scouts who biked past the lab this morning, covered in grime but otherwise unharmed. He doesn’t see Cecil, but Cecil’s all right... he’s certain of that, although he can’t say why.

“It’s a real town,” Chelle says. “Real,” and then she jumps as an electronic tone spirals up between them. “My phone. It’s ringing!”

“Well, get it, then.”

“I don’t know this number. I think — MASH, I think it must be for _you.”_

Carlos takes the phone, firmly shoving aside the impulse to fiddle with it so the time will display again. Cautiously, “Hello?”

“All _right!”_ Eli crows. “I win! Boss, you okay?”

“I am. I’m okay. I’m always fine,” says Carlos, aware that he’s grinning like an idiot. “Are _you_ all okay?”

_“I_ want to talk to him,” Phil’s voice interrupts, and Eli laughs. “I’m pretty sure that was loud enough for him to hear you. Yeah, we’re okay, we’re all okay. We, um, we just had some roof trouble. And there was a static patch out here, it fucked up reception for a while. And Dave’s hair is a _disaster.”_

“I literally cannot imagine Dave’s hair being a disaster. What happened?”

“Uh, he was doing an experiment and the iPad got chewy again. We had to take our minds off — well, you know. Do you have any batteries?”

Chelle is watching him with amused curiosity. He gives her a little salute. “I did, but then I took off my coat.”

“Oh yeah. Mare left it in the backseat of the car. We got your phone, too.”

Carlos sighs. “Good. What time is it?”

“I win _again!_ He wants the time. Now we know for sure they didn’t replace him with a robot.”

“Guys, I’m in the middle of the street, I’m not going to do the robot impression. And this isn’t my phone, either, I have to give it back. What time is it?”

“5:14,” Marianne calls from the background. “Carlos, don’t forget, sunset’s supposed to be in twenty minutes.”

“Oh. Fuck.”

“What is it?” Chelle asks.

“Just a minute,” and to Eli, “Don’t tell me where you are. Just meet me at the airport as soon as you can.”

“You got it, boss. Okay, we can figure out the money in the car. Let’s ride, gents and ladies and miniature AIs! Seeya soon.”

_Click._ Carlos takes a deep, deliberate breath, and hands the phone back to Chelle. “I have an appointment,” he says, in response to her worried look. “I forgot about it, and... it could be dangerous.”

“Uh huh. And is this the person you promised to risk your life for?”

Carlos rubs his forehead, where the beginning of a soft ache is making itself felt. “No, actually, it’s my boss.”

“That doesn’t sound as dangerous as the rest of your day,” she points out.

“You only say that because you’ve never met him. And I only have twenty minutes to get there. You won’t reconsider staying in my apartment until I get back? There isn’t an active emergency going on anymore, and —”

_“Oh_ no you don’t.”

“There’s beer in the fridge,” he offers, lamely.

“Not even if it was seventy-year-old Scotch,” says Chelle. “Not when things are getting interesting.”

Sunset over the Night Vale airport is a study in contrasts.

The place is basically just a tower and a landing strip, a small roofed structure like an oversized bus shelter next to the parking lot instead of a proper terminal, surrounded by desert that always seems to be on the point of swallowing it up. It’s far enough from the center of town that the lights coming on in the distance make the cluster of buildings look like a glimmering bracelet.

Empty, it would be beautiful enough to knock Carlos’s breath loose, the Sand Wastes at his back and home visible below him, welcoming him, warning him, reminding him.

But tonight the airport is occupied.

A gleaming small plane, a Cessna, sits at the end of the airstrip with stiff wings outstretched like an origami bird, colorless under the fierce light of the horizon. Nearby, three black sedans like the one the Director drove into town in July are drawn up in lazy battle array, doors closed.

Chelle is shaking when they climb out of the Prius, and falls several steps behind Carlos. When he turns, she laughs nervously. “Nothing to see here. Those cars just look like — they look like — _oh God,”_ and her face contorts in terror. Carlos whirls, but at first he can’t see what’s frightened her.

Then he realizes that the rear driver’s side door of the nearest sedan has a broken window.

He opens his mouth, whether to curse or call out a challenge or simply announce his presence, he doesn’t get time to decide. The Director pointedly clears his throat from behind both of them, and when they turn, Chelle with tears in her eyes and Carlos grimly prepared, he’s just _there,_ as if he rose up out of the earth seconds ago and the vehicles around them are all for show. Two men in hats stand flanking him, their heavy features like greasepainted masks in the shadows.

“Well, this makes things a lot simpler,” he says, in that lifeless and yet still somehow smug voice. “In spite of the fact that you’re three minutes late. And you so habitually punctual.”

“I ran into some delays,” Carlos says, flatly.

“What _is_ this?” Chelle demands. “Who are you?”

“I am the Director. You must be Candidate One — Walters, isn’t it? Odd. I was expecting a more traditional form of clothing, but human social customs aren’t really my area. Has none of my proposal been explained to you?”

“I’ve never _heard_ of you,” Chelle spits at him, “but these thugs of yours threw me in the back of that fucking car and brought me here.”

“Yeah,” Carlos says, still flatly, “what’s that about, kidnapping someone who’s never even heard of Night Vale and bringing her here?”

“You mean, _recruiting_ a new member for your team? Carlos, your work is brilliant, but it’s moving too slowly. You’ve been here for a little over seven months, and you keep, as you say, running into delays. You need more — manpower, isn’t that the word? You need another associate. I’d furnish you with an army, if it were feasible, but one man at a time will have to do.”

Carlos looks down at Chelle, stunned, and finds her backing away from him. In a thread of her usual voice, _“You’re_ Carlos?”

“Yes...”

_“You’re_ the one they were supposed to deliver me to like a fucking sack of groceries?” Gaining force and fury. “The one running some secret project, location and mission statement omitted? _You’re_ the Carlos I’ve been running _away_ from this whole time?”

“No — Chelle, I —”

“Is this a _game_ to you?” Her clenched knuckles snap out, sending him reeling back with a fresh bolt of pain running through his shoulder. “Waiting to see how long it’d take me to _guess?_ Where are those people you talked to on the phone? Did you make them up, too?”

“I didn’t _know,”_ he says, and presses his hand carefully to the reinjured spot. “Chelle, I didn’t _know!_ I didn’t make anything up, I had no _idea_ they would just _take_ someone like that. And my research project isn’t a secret —”

“Not technically,” interposes the Director, “but Night Vale is. It’s one of the best-kept secrets in the world. We couldn’t risk you finding out anything classified before you made a commitment to us, you see. We couldn’t risk you becoming _competition.”_

Carlos suppresses a snarl. “You’re a complete fuckhead,” he says. “Do you need a translation for that one?”

“No,” the Director says, still with inhuman calm, “the implied meaning is quite clear. But also irrelevant. Your performance review is concluded, and it’s Candidate One who needs to make a decision.”

“I won’t let you hurt her.”

“Oh, let’s be reasonable, Carlos. You couldn’t stop me.”

“I’ll damn fucking well _try,”_ and the snarl escapes on his last word.

“Wait,” says Chelle. Her voice is still tearstained, but firm. “Stop for just a second. Wanna give me a minute to think here?”

“I do have another meeting to get to,” the Director replies, “but I can extend that much professional courtesy.”

“Professional courtesy is kind of a trip after threats and abduction.” Chelle crosses her arms. “You want me to work for Carlos, what would I have to do?”

“Chelle —”

“Shut up, MASH, I’m haggling here.” She looks up at the Director, steady again. “I use my not inconsiderable talents to help out his research project, and then what? Do you pay me, you know, actual money, or is it one of those ‘think yourself lucky you’re not dead’ kind of deals?”

“There is a grant. The money allocated for paying employees is, of course, at Carlos’s discretion, but I understand his other associates do well for themselves. And, should you meet your end sooner than we anticipate, well... funerals in Night Vale are cheaper than you might think.”

She raises her eyebrows, the rind of a sardonic smile finally appearing. Carlos is delighted to see it. “Oh, good, ’cause _that_ was obviously my first concern.”

“Well?” The Director sounds, as usual, as though the outcome of the discussion weighs nothing to him, but the men in hats — who are probably, like the Director himself, not men at all — twitch as if in preparatory motion.

Chelle shrugs. “All right. I’ll do it. You want me to sign your bullshit paperwork?”

“A verbal contract is sufficient. Carlos can take care of that later. Welcome to the Night Vale research team, then, Richard Walters. Let me be the first to advise you — don’t attempt to leave it again without being formally dismissed.” He waves away the men in hats; they circle the group and begin folding themselves back into the black sedan. “Oh, and Carlos: do be a bit more careful about your belongings. Seeing you without a watch, it might give me the impression that you’re losing your touch.”

“It was about ready to be replaced anyway,” says Carlos. “So are we done, then?”

The Director smiles, a hideous waxwork expression that leaves his eyes entirely unchanged. “For now.”

They wait another few minutes after the cars have pulled away and the plane has lifted, leaning side by side against the Prius.

“Are you sure?” asks Carlos, eventually.

“Yeah. I’m sure.” She watches the ashes of the sunset die out, rubbing her arms against the gathering cold.

“It’s not just the not getting killed part?”

“Well, that was important, obviously.”

“I am so sorry,” he says. “I had standards for who I brought with me. They all agreed to come even though they knew it was dangerous. I never meant anyone to be dragged in against their will. And now I have to apologize for that monster’s manners, on top of everything else. Should I have asked you about what pronouns you prefer?”

“No, you guessed right. You didn’t suspect, then? That I'm trans?”

“I was a bit busy trying to make sure we didn’t die. Maybe a little? It’s none of my business, though, I mean, something that intimate — a person isn’t just a pile of physical evidence, there’s something there that classification doesn’t address. And I’m really, really not very good at that,” he adds, thinking of Cecil. Cecil sitting next to him in the car, laughing; Cecil’s fingers warm and wrapped around his own, Cecil leaning in intently, too close and still not close enough.

Cecil.

_Damn_ it.

“I should be apologizing,” Chelle says into his pause, as the headlights of Marianne’s car splash across the pavement. “I just jumped to conclusions. I’m sorry about your shoulder.”

“It’s okay, just my semi-weekly war wound. You can make it up to me by staying away from the dog park.”

“Hell, man,” she laughs, _“no_ problem.”

After a late dinner made raucous by Chelle’s introduction to the group, a late swing by the lab to check that nothing important was missed there, and the longest day he’s had in weeks, Carlos wants nothing more than to go to sleep in his own bed. But he has one last thing to do first.

In one of the nameless remedy shops along Old Musk Road, one of the many that only opens after dark, he finds a display of miniature bloodstones. The shop owner, smiling behind a heavy veil, shows him how to arrange them in his cupped palms until they roll off or align along the creases of his hand, until he has nine of them in a perfect circle, resonating against his skin. Nine is an excellent number, the shop owner assures him, especially for a beginner.

At home, following Marianne’s archived notes on the computer and his own dimly sought intuition, he arranges them again on top of his bedside cabinet, sealing each one with a drop of blood from his pricked index finger.

In the circle, he writes, _Nothing yet._ The blood runs out precisely when he finishes the _t,_ and then the message curls and melts away into the darkly stained wood.

He waits, skin prickling.

Then a response, darker, more clotted blood taking shape from the air: _KEEP TRYING._ It lingers, then vanishes also.

In its place lies an unexpected object, the City Council’s double-sided gift — an old-fashioned, subtly ornate fountain pen. Its red barrel matches exactly, in hungry glint and smooth, polished surface, the bloodstones surrounding it.

_Citizenship._

Carlos looks at the pen for a long moment, and then he picks it up before he can think better of it, slips it under his pillow, and switches off the bedside lamp.

 

He half-expects horrible images to follow him down on his way to sleep, but there is only a nameless, clean, half-conscious silence. The silence before the Voice.

The best silence of all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Two things happened in between this chapter and the last.
> 
> Firstly, I went to visit [Ysabet](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TheYsabet/pseuds/TheYsabet) in Arizona. It was an amazing trip ([you can see pictures of it here](https://www.flickr.com/photos/thebookofnights/collections/72157644657370206/), if you like pictures of the desert), and it never would have happened if I hadn't screwed up my courage and posted this series. I am a creature of drawn curtains and comforting rain and dim computer screens, and could never live year-round in a hot climate... but Arizona stole all my breath. I got to see exactly what the scrublands and the Sand Wastes look like. We even listened to a newly released episode while driving through the desert — _A Story About Them_ , which is still one of my favorites — and that was as close to seeing Night Vale as you can get without a dimensional portal.
> 
> Secondly, I suffered some pretty severe depression this year, which is still ongoing, although less immediately concerning. When I get sufficiently depressed and anxious, something necessary for writing becomes inaccessible, no matter how badly I miss it. I posted online about what I was going through, and sometimes, when I did, _Partially Stars_ fans reassured me — total strangers, people I've made friends with, and people who left anonymous messages just because they cared. So I want to tell you all _thank you_. You know who you are, even if I don't.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos and questions and [Tumblr](http://thebookofnights.com) messages make me really happy.
> 
> (Also I am a huge nerd and I made [an RP blog for Carlos](http://andhisperfecthair.tumblr.com). It hasn't been much frequented yet, but who knows what might happen?)


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